


Your Vigil In My Keeping

by PinkLetterDay



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, Together They Fight Crime, Wee!stallen, barry is a smol and traumatized baby, iris is his forever protector
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 19:32:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16373690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: No one believes Barry about The Man In The Yellow Suit, which is why it’s down to him to protect his new home. But his best friend always has his back.





	Your Vigil In My Keeping

**Author's Note:**

> I know Kim Possible came out in 2002 rather than 2000 but I have a firm headcanon that Barry and Iris love the crap out of that show and dressed up as Kim and Ron for Halloween. The science project I assigned to sixth grade which was the year Barry came to live with them, an obvious continuity error on the show.

 

Iris didn't know what had woken her up at first, except that once she had, she was quite sure she wasn’t alone in her room.

This failed to freak her out. Barry was becoming notorious in the West house for his night-time wanderings.

She sat up to look around and almost missed him except for the sliver of light through her half-open door falling on a lump huddled on the floor beside her bed.

“Barry? What’re you doing?”

“Nothing,” said the lump. “Couldn’t sleep. I’m okay.”

“You’re on the floor, Barr.”

“It’s fine. I like it here.”

“You like it…on the floor?” she said dubiously.

The lump gave what might have been a shrug. “Yeah.”

Iris suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. It was at times like these she was reminded that her best friend was a boy and therefore prone to deep weirdness.

She gathered up her own pink Kim Possible blanket and slid to the floor beside him. “Move over.”

“What are you doing?,” Barry’s tousled head came into view as he hurriedly scootched backward, dislodging his own blanket.

“Seeing how much  _I_  like the floor,” she huddled closer to him, wincing at the roughness of the carpet through her socks. “Hmm. It's kinda cold.”

Barry bumped her shoulder with a sigh. “Go back to sleep, Iris.”

He seemed to have built himself a nest here. His Dexter’s Laboratory backpack leaned against her bedpost, stuffed full of assorted snacks, a flashlight and Prisoner of Azkaban, among others. “Barry, what are you doing really?”

She knew his ears were going red because he was running his hands along the back of them. She couldn’t make out his mumbling though.

“Huh?”

“I’m scared the Man in The Yellow Suit will come back,” he said, worrying at a corner of his PJs. “I don’t want him to get you too.”

It wasn’t that this hadn’t occurred to Iris. The Man In The Yellow Suit (which was how she and Barry both thought of him, all the words capitalized) now featured prominently in her own nightmares. It would have been hard not to, the way Barry still shook with fear when he spoke about him. Unlike her Dad, Iris knew Barry wasn’t lying.

But even when her Dad was being an unreasonable grown-up, she still had every faith in him to do his Dad-duty. “Dad will protect us. He has a gun and can arrest people.” It’s why all the bad guys were scared of him.

“Joe doesn’t even believe he's real,” he clasped his hands together, running them over his face in frustration. “You don’t understand. He can  _go through walls._ ”

Iris had no answer to that. The small knot of fear in her own chest grew a little bigger. “What’ll we do if he comes?” she whispered.

“I don’t know," he confessed, then brightened "But I’ve come up with some ideas!"

He launched animatedly into an elaborate plan involving a tripwire, spray paint, a joy buzzer, the robot from his science fair project "Destructo", and Dad's old police siren he had found in their attic and repurposed.

“…so while he's blind and on fire and the smoke alarms are going off and Destructo trips the circuit breaker...maybe I can...warn your Dad or something,” he finished and subsided awkwardly, perhaps realizing that this conclusion lacked the expected panache.

There were some glaring holes in this plan. Her best friend was the smartest person she knew, he just didn’t quite think obvious things through sometimes. This wasn’t the time to bring that up though. 

(Except maybe she should give her Dad a head’s up about Destructo just in case. The school lab had yet to recover from that one.)

“Okay,” she allowed. “But you cant stay awake and guard my room every night, Barry,” a thought struck her “- how long have you been doing this?”

He rubbed the back of his neck again, looking shifty. “Uh.”

Suddenly, all the mornings he had looked like half a zombie made sense. It had worried her Dad so much he had spoken to his psychiatrist again.

She came to a decision and started tugging all her own pillows down onto the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“You need to sleep,” she said firmly, pushing him gently out of the way to make a larger, more comfortable nest.

“I can’t. I told you -”

“So we can take turns, silly. Look,” like she said, common sense sometimes eluded that brilliant brain, “you wont make a very good guard if you’re falling asleep halfway. This way we can both keep watch and get some rest.”

Barry hesitated, but he couldn’t fault her logic. He gave her the flashlight and went unresisting when she tugged his head down onto the pillow near her knee, settling down with a small sound of tired relief. She settled his blanket over him, dug out the apple and started reading Harry Potter by flashlight.

She had just begun reading about Harry doing the same when Barry whispered, “Iris. You do believe me dont you? You dont think Im crazy?”

She blinked down at him. What kind of question was that? “Of course I believe you. You’re my best friend. You wouldn’t lie to me and you’re not crazy. Dad’ll figure it out soon enough.” Of course he would. He was only stubborn and tended to dig his heels in if you pushed him. Kinda like Barry, actually.

“Okay.”

“You get some sleep now,” she ran a hand through his hair, always so soft and fluffy like a puppy’s. “I’ll wake you up when its your turn.”

Another moment of silence.

“Iris?”

“Yeah, Barry?”

“I don’t really know what to do if the Man in Yellow comes back,” he whispered fearfully. “What if your Dad cant stop him?”

Iris tamped down on the fear that was making her own heart beat hard. “If he comes, we’ll be ready for him.”

His clammy fingers closed around her wrist. “You won’t let him get you, will you?”

“Of course I won’t. I’m tough. Dad says so.”

“Yeah you are,” the proud smile in his voice warmed her better than a mug of hot chocolate. “The toughest.”

“And don’t you forget it!" They both snickered. She found his hand and squeezed it. “I won’t let him get you either. I promise.”

“Promise on what?”

It was good that they had their own version of this, because this was assuredly not a situation where “cross my heart and hope to die” would be appropriate at all.

“On all the brownies I’ll ever eat!,” she said grandly, and then the serious part, “And my Mom’s rings.”

“Okay. I promise on…all the cookie dough ice cream in Happy Harbour. With extra sprinkles,” he swallowed, voice trembling a little. “And my Dad.”

The protective anger that coursed through her was stronger than all her night terrors. She laid her head on his and wrapped her arms and legs around his torso, tight enough to hurt a little. But he clutched her back just as fast.

“We’ll keep each other safe, Barry. You’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this story, I'd love to hear from you! You can also visit me at [pinkletterday](https://pinkletterday.tumblr.com) on tumblr. <3


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